Going with more efficient contractors make sense, but just saying "we'll make our bases more efficient and do more with less" is easy to say and hard to do.
I'm sure a lot of European countries were trying to do more with less when they embraced the 90s peace dividend, and then what we saw when Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone was checking out the state of their armies, was that mostly they had just done less with less.
The counter-point to that is that Russia has continued to spend a lot on their military and yet wasn't able to steamroll Ukraine at all, so maybe the US is also spending more to get less.
Not doing less with less doesn't mean you are doing more with more.
Russia's problem was they thought they were spending a lot on their military, but they were really enriching their top military brass while their ancient gear mostly rotted.
Back on topic, however, this is what I'm talking about[1]:
> The radical-patriotic television channel Tsargrad indignantly reported that “the actual scale of corruption under [former Defense Minister Sergey] Shoigu was not in the millions but in the trillions of rubles that officials dishonorably stole from the Russian Army.”
I don't disagree that Russia might not be spending their military money effectively (including with copious corruption), but that really has no bearing on whether the US is spending their money effectively, which as far as I can tell we are not. I brought up Russia merely as an example that spending money does not mean your military is more capable.
I'm sure a lot of European countries were trying to do more with less when they embraced the 90s peace dividend, and then what we saw when Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone was checking out the state of their armies, was that mostly they had just done less with less.